by Kris Ripper
I groaned. “I’m the worst, oh my god.”
“Nah, it was sweet. You saw a thing that upset me and you tried to help me fix it. Or when you got me that subscription fruit basket for my birthday when I said I was going vegan?”
Mia laughed. “Okay, that was hilarious and also very sweet. I think all of us ate better that year.”
“And we took all those sexy fruit pictures!”
I cringed. “The one with the, uh, melons? And Ronnie with a sports bra on?”
“I should have made her buy that sports bra! I could never wear it again.” Mia kissed my forehead. “You are an incredible friend, Dec. Think of all the times you’ve dropped dinner by when you knew we were busy. Or all the nights you’ve stayed up playing board games because Ronnie couldn’t sleep.”
“You’re the only one who can stand Oscar when he’s had another breakup.”
“That’s nothing,” I argued. “I just ignore him when he’s being an asshole.”
“You’re a fucking saint, man. He’s lucky I don’t punch him when he’s being an asshole.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s like he has all these feelings and he doesn’t know what to do with them so he lashes out. I don’t take it personally.”
Mason squeezed my hands again before releasing them. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Those are the qualities that make you a really good friend, you know?”
“That doesn’t mean I can be...whatever Sidney wants.”
“Why do you think they want something other than a really good friend? It seems like that is what they want.”
“Plus,” Mia said, tone super reasonable, “didn’t you say the sex was good?”
“Yeah, but...”
Both of them just looked at me.
“But there’s...other stuff. Like...like the inevitability of me fucking it up.”
Mia nudged Mason. “I’ll let you take this one. I have to pee.”
“Girl, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were pregnant.” He narrowed his eyes. “Wait—”
“No way! We just got married! We are not having kids yet.” She slid off the bed and into my tiny bathroom.
Mason engulfed me in a hug that felt so good I wanted to move in and stay awhile. “Basically you decided you were eventually going to fuck up so you fucked up really hard as soon as you could?”
I sagged. “I hate this. I miss them so much. And it’s not like with you and me. I thought it was going to be like that, that not being with them would be hard at first, but on some level I’d at least feel like it was the only thing I could have done.”
“It took me a long time to feel that way, but I think I know what you mean. The sense that maybe doors were opening instead of closing.”
“Yeah. Exactly. This... I feel like I drove straight into a wall. On purpose. And now I’m all, gee, being covered in glass shards and bleeding all over the place is super inconvenient, why didn’t I think of that before?”
“Well, this is nothing like that because you can walk this back.”
I pulled away. “You’re joking.”
“Um. No? What’s your genius plan? Pretending none of it ever happened and hitting the dating apps?”
Mia emerged in time to hear the last half of the sentence. “But wait. You have to talk to them. Right? You can’t not? Declan. You have to talk to them.”
“And say what?” I demanded with way more vehemence than Mia really deserved to have shot in her direction. “Sorry. I just mean, what do I say about this? Oops, sorry I accidentally dumped you while having a slight panic attack?”
“Yes!”
“Excuse me—” Mason tugged me in for a brief, almost violent hug. “You ass. What panic attack? You had a panic attack and you didn’t call me? Hi, your best fucking friend. What the hell.”
“It was stupid.”
“You’re stupid.”
I uttered a watery laugh and shoved at him. “Shut up. It was horrible. I thought I could push it down. Do the show like normal, pretend everything was fine, but then I was flipping out and babbling and Sidney was just staring at me and...”
“Dec...” Mia sat down again, expression troubled. “One of the things that’s nice about having a person, like a relationship—and I know all relationships aren’t the same, but in general—is that you don’t always have to pretend with that person. But what if you’d gone to Sidney’s and said you were super anxious and couldn’t do the show in that exact moment?”
“But I’d said I would.”
“I know, but you...couldn’t.” She’d gone all gentle. “You had a panic attack. It’s not like you could just reschedule it for when it was more convenient.”
“Sometimes I can cover it up for a while.” Not forever, but it hadn’t been dumb to think I might be able to do it for an hour.
“But you didn’t have to. Right? What’s the worst that could have happened if you’d been honest with them?”
It hadn’t occurred to me. I wiggled under the blankets on the bed and pulled them up to my chin. “I don’t know.” Except that wasn’t true. They would have been wonderful and compassionate. And probably not in a pitying way, either. If I’d said I couldn’t do the show right then, Sidney would have told me it was fine. They probably would have invited me to stay and read a book or something. Because they liked it when I was around while they worked. And they cared about me.
When I looked at it that way, the last thing they would have wanted was for me to force myself to do the show when I was that anxious.
“I’m so dumb,” I mumbled, sinking farther into the bed.
“You’re not dumb,” Mia said.
“No comment,” Mase said.
I tried to kick him from under the covers, but I didn’t have enough freedom of movement to do a good job. “But I can’t talk to them. I have no idea what I’d even say.”
“Hmm, let me think.” He assumed a bastardized The Thinker pose. “You could start with I’m sorry, really sorry, like I-will-be-your-hot-sex-monkey-for-a-week sorry.”
Mia nodded gravely. “That seems reasonable.”
I managed to hit both of them with one pillow. Hashtag skillz-with-a-z. “No, but seriously. If someone did what I—”
Mase put his hand over my mouth. It was not as hot as when Sidney did it. “You did way worse to me, son, and I got over it. Even if you weren’t so hung up on them you can’t see straight—which you are, by the way—it would still be a decent thing to apologize.”
“But nothing’s changed!” I whined. “I still can’t be this person.”
“What person?”
I did a whole big flapping thing with my arms. “This person who someone else can trust! This person who deserves to fall in love!”
“I’m taking that as a profound insult. I fell in love with you, and I felt lucky that you were in love with me.”
“And then I fucked it up so badly, Mase. I fucked it up so, so badly. I like destroyed you, and I loved you more than anything.”
“Um, hi, do I look destroyed to you right now? Don’t make me into the stick you use to beat yourself, okay?” He leaned in until most of my vision was taken up with his face. “Hate to break it to you, sunshine, but I got over your ass.”
I laughed. It was a wet, exhausted laugh, but it was still a laugh. “Yeah, you did. But like... I don’t want to do that again.”
He shrugged. “So talk to Sidney. Look, Dec, you’re my best friend in the world. I’m not even that pissed that you lucked out and found someone amazing, but I really will be pissed if you throw that away because you’re scared.” He shook me very gently. “I trust you. And if Sidney wants to trust you, you should let them. You definitely shouldn’t decide they don’t have the right to make that choice.”
I looked at him, feeling all the years of our friendship, seei
ng all the love we’d had for each other etched in his face as clearly as he must see it in mine. “I don’t think I could forgive me.”
“You would forgive me, though. Or Mia or Ronnie or Oscar.”
Which...yeah.
“So what makes you unforgivable?”
“I fucked up worse?”
He shook his head. “Not this time. This time it’s a blip.” When I opened my mouth he said, “Okay, a really big blip. And if Sidney doesn’t want to take you up on hot monkey sex, fine, but I think probably they’d appreciate the opportunity to forgive you. Or maybe kick you. Either way.”
“No kicking.” Mia kissed my cheek. “Mase is right. Also maybe you should let us, I dunno, help or something next time you have a panic attack.”
“It’s not, like, a hobby of mine,” I grumbled. “And help how? Hold my hand while I cry?”
“Uh...yes? Would that not be helpful?” She glanced at Mase, who shrugged again. “I think if I were having a panic attack that’d be comforting.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to, but at least have it as an option. And I hope that whatever happens, Sidney comes back to drinks. I really like them.”
“Me too.”
Mason went to mess with my hair then made a face at it instead. “Cheer up, buttercup. And take a damn shower.”
“You’re not my mom!”
He grinned.
They stayed a little while longer, making sure I was basically all right. Mase offered to cancel the date he had planned so we could cuddle and watch TV, and Mia invited me over for a sleepover at her and Ronnie’s house, but in the end I opted to stay home.
I spent a couple of hours cleaning, which you can only do in a tiny little room if you have hashtag-mad-skillz at procrastination and distraction, which I do. But by the time I went to bed I had done my laundry at the laundromat down the street, cleaned and put away all my dishes, changed the sheets on my bed, and swept the floor.
Not that cleaning cures depression or anything, but it at least made me feel like less of a lump. And it gave me something to do while I obsessed over texting/calling/emailing/sending a pigeon to Sidney. I could say I was sorry, but then what?
Going to sleep in a clean apartment was nice, but I was no closer to figuring out what to do. Cleaning: doesn’t cure being a dumbass. Tragically.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I conducted an aggressive program of self-care on Sunday, still putting off actually talking to Sidney because I totally needed it.
Luxurious bath complete with tea and a book: check.
Start carnitas in the slow cooker: check.
Add a bunch of people on Instagram who post beautiful travel pictures because I love looking at them: check.
Get a little weepy about a fantasy of exploring castle ruins somewhere in the world: check. (Technically not all that self-carey, but it was triggered by the pictures, and I went with it. I bet Sidney was fun to travel with... Sidetracked. Back to self-care.)
Leave a message for my old therapist to schedule an appointment (because it might help and it couldn’t hurt): check.
Cut all my nails, like a grown-up: check.
Play with Toby in the sun: check.
Stay away from Twitter: check.
Talk to Mase about his date, which was good: check.
Send Oscar a text message with all emojis just to annoy him: check.
Contemplate whether “annoy your friends” counts as self-care and decide it does: check.
Take a nap: check.
Check on carnitas, run out for avocados: check.
Feast: check.
(In between those last two there was a long contemplation of inviting Sidney over for dinner, but I chickened out. Definitely not good self-care, but then again, I sort of had a date with myself, which is a legit item on your standard internet self-care checklist, so I win.)
Monday. I’d talk to them Monday. They had the show. I’d call them after the show. Or no, text. Or maybe email. Except I could email them at any point during the day, even when they were at work. Technically I could also text them while they were at work. Scratch that.
But Monday. Sunday was for self-care. Monday was for...dealing with what I’d done. Good plan.
* * *
The problem with putting something off is that most things you postpone don’t get easier the longer you go without doing them.
Case in point: Monday morning, sitting in the fish bowl, drinking coffee and staring into space. Monday afternoon, me in the fish bowl, still staring into space like the good little permanent employee I was.
Monday at quitting time, sitting in my car, trying to decide what to do.
For six weeks I’d gotten out of work on Monday and driven to Sidney’s apartment to film The Love Study. I wondered how many more weeks it would take before I no longer instinctively wanted to drive to their place on Mondays after work. Anyway, I should probably call them tomorrow. When they didn’t have a show to shoot.
The show only took twenty minutes. Thirty if you add in all the after-show stuff.
Maybe they’d be too tired after the show to talk to me.
No, that was illogical.
Maybe they wouldn’t want to talk to me at all, which was possible, and I would accept it. Might even be relieved.
There was always tomorrow...
Which was what I’d said yesterday. I should have called them yesterday after my day of self-care. That would have been super clever.
I could wait until next weekend and do a whole other day of self-care, which was probably a good habit to get into anyway, and call them then?
This seemed like a fresh and innovative idea until I realized it was a great big ball of anxiety and procrastination wrapped up with a TREAT YOURSELF bow.
I should do it today. If I was going to. And Mase would ask. So would Mia.
The show was about to start, because I’d been sitting in my car for the entire time it would have taken me to drive over there. Wow. Really good time management, Dec. Pro shit.
I pulled up Your Spinster Uncle on my phone (I was already subscribed) and waited for the notification of the livestream. When it pinged, I clicked.
Sidney looked good. Not good as in well rested or anything (and I bet there was a vegetable graveyard in their fridge) but good to me. I liked to see them.
“Welcome to Your Spinster Uncle. I’m your spinster uncle Sidney, and we’re working through some Q and A backlog, so let’s get to it. As always, you can message the message number while we’re live, or you can call in.”
It had been weeks since I’d seen an episode of their show, so maybe I was making it up, but it sure seemed like they weren’t bringing the same level of energy they usually did. They sounded a little monotone. Not quite bored. Maybe numb?
Other than looking tired, though, they were in a typical Spinster Uncle outfit. Their hair was pulled back in a ponytail and they were wearing a black T-shirt with their rainbow choker. I bit my lip, looking at their neck, thinking about kissing them.
Would trade sex monkey services for forgiveness. Hands down. Would volunteer sex monkey services free of charge.
I watched as they worked their way through a few emailed questions and a text message. They were really good at the whole advice-giving thing, which I’d weirdly never considered until that exact moment, despite the fact that they’d given me legit advice a few times in the beginning of The Love Study, and all of it had been good.
My chest ached, thinking about that. Simpler times. We were so much more innocent then...or no. But I hadn’t felt any pressure and I was a lot more fun when I didn’t feel pressured to conform to some kind of mold.
The whole point of The Love Study was figuring out what I wanted, and then when I finally got it, I somehow fucked it
up. Except what I’d wanted was to spend time with Sidney, not necessarily to become one half of a couple. I didn’t even understand what that meant, and I wanted to talk to Sidney about it because they were the person I could talk to about relationship models and how they applied to real life.
They took a call from someone sounding young who asked if Sidney’s parents were divorced because the caller’s parents were getting divorced and they were really sad.
“Divorce is hard in a lot of ways, especially on kids.” Sidney’s voice was low, careful now. They were looking right into the camera. “I think it’s sometimes helpful if you think of what you’re feeling as grief. Your family will change now, and that can be scary. You have a right to mourn for how things used to be. Do you have access to a counselor? Maybe at school? It helps to talk things out sometimes, if you find a person you can trust.”
The caller could maybe talk to the school counselor (aww, this kid had to be young, that was middle school or high school lingo). Sidney rattled off a few websites and hotline numbers and kept the caller on for a few more minutes, their voices fading into the background while I sat in my car in a parking lot watching a tiny screen.
I had the worst idea.
The very worst.
It was so bad it might...curve back around to being good?
Or if not good, acceptable?
I could call in.
I needed advice, after all. And Your Spinster Uncle was an advice show. I checked the time. If I was gonna do this, I’d have to do it now.
They didn’t publicize the phone number on YouTube (“That way lies madness and perverts—not the good kind,” they’d explained when I asked), but I knew where to find it.
Was I doing this?
Would they be mad if I did? I mean, it might not be fair? But the last time I’d needed advice about them I’d asked them on the show, and they’d said it was a one on the not-messed-up side of the scale. They’d even said that being live let them think more clearly, so...maybe it was okay?
Or maybe I was just trying to justify doing a horrible thing.
Except Sidney wanted me to trust them. And I did.